Something worth studying sooner or later: the plagiarism of real life. Maybe what it all comes down to is just a lot of people watching TV and reading books and magazines and semi-consciously offering as their own the repeated thoughts, phrases, stories and insights of others. Everyone is very much on the back of this Kaavya Viswanathan girl, but there’s a little of her in everyone – anyone who has regular conversations, anyway, or who stores up amusing anecdotes or hard-to-track-down turns of phrase, waiting only for just the right moment to let them fly, which I guess includes most of us.

Think of what Bob Dylan said in "Brownsville Girl": "If there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now."